Chapter 10
The major truth was not that Selena hated Ava.
It was that Selena and Luca had decided Isabella’s memory had to lose before the marriage could begin.
Everything else grew from that.
Selena entered Donato’s life a year after Isabella’s death.
At first, she treated Ava gently.
She brought books.
Sat beside her at breakfast.
Helped with bedtime.
Donato believed that kindness meant Selena understood something fundamental:
No woman could replace Ava’s mother.
Selena understood the words.
She did not accept the reality.
As the engagement became serious, she increasingly felt that she was living in a house where the most important woman was dead.
Isabella’s photographs remained.
Her traditions remained.
Ava asked for her.
Donato spoke about her.
Staff compared routines to the way Isabella had done them.
Selena began to feel like a guest in a marriage that had technically ended.
Those feelings were painful.
Not immoral.
What she chose to do with them became the betrayal.
Luca reinforced the worst interpretation.
He told Selena she would never have authority as Donato’s wife while Ava could invoke Isabella every time she disliked a rule.
He also had his own motive.
Donato’s life had changed after becoming a father and changed further after Isabella’s death.
He shortened meetings.
Delegated more.
Turned down travel.
Made associates wait when Ava needed him.
Luca believed the Bianchi organization was becoming dependent on the emotional needs of a small child.
If Selena became the household authority and Isabella’s memory stopped functioning as an emotional bridge between Ava and Donato, Luca believed Donato would gradually return to the man he had been before fatherhood dominated his schedule.
So the siblings built one strategy serving two motives.
Selena would become the unquestioned woman of the house.
Luca would restore separation between Donato’s fatherhood and his leadership.
The first stage looked harmless.
Remove some photographs.
Move keepsakes.
Call it transition.
Then they restricted Ava’s access to Donato when she cried.
Then they taught staff to treat memorial objects as unhealthy.
Then they began measuring how long Ava remained upset before she stopped calling for him.
The birthday was supposed to become the turning point.
Selena knew Donato’s gift was almost certainly connected to Isabella.
Luca’s notes called it a high-emotion item.
Their plan was to use the moment to establish that Ava did not control the household simply because something reminded her of her mother.
What happened at the pool went beyond even Luca’s written strategy.
When Ava clutched the present and refused Selena’s demand to put it aside until after cake, Selena lost control.
She threw it into the water.
Ava reached for it.
Selena shoved her.
Luca laughed because he had become so committed to the theory that “holding the boundary” mattered more than what was happening to the child in front of him.
The three clues from the beginning finally locked together.
Selena moved Donato’s specific present near the pool after learning it likely contained an Isabella keepsake.
Isabella’s photographs, blanket, and personal objects had already been marked for removal after Ava’s birthday.
And Luca’s private notes described the birthday gift as an opportunity to “test transition.”
The gift had not been thrown away because it was stupid.
It had been thrown away because it represented the one thing Selena could not tolerate:
Ava being allowed to love a dead mother without that love reducing anyone else.
Donato sat in Rebecca’s office after the full timeline was presented.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then:
“She thought my daughter had to lose her mother twice.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“Yes.”
Donato’s expression hardened.
“And Luca thought that would make me stronger.”
“Yes.”
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He looked through the window toward the estate lawn where Ava was playing under professional supervision.
“They were both wrong.”
